Xenosaga: The Salem Cronicles
by LegendaryFro
Summary: My first fanfiction ever. Possibly turned oneshot due to lack of ideas for continuation. Tis about a rather strange colony, and the rather strange things that happen in it, mostly mindrelated conscious links, possesion, etc. Contains slight SxKM.


Disclaimer: What, do you –really- think I own these characters? I might pwnz0rz j00, but not Xenosaga. Therefore, no, I do not own Xenosaga, the characters therein, or anything related to them.

I thought of this story after staying up for a few hours after 12 am, so it'll be weird, because I get weird when I lack sleep.

This story is set during no particular part of the series, but since I like the Episode one character designs better (haven't played Episode Two, so I know the designs better anyway), so I imagine them as in that period. And by them I mean KM and Shion… and Kelso from That 70s Show. Also, all place names cept the Elsa and related areas are made up as far as I know.

Please read and review. This is my first Fan-Fic, so please be somewhat nice, but tell me what to improve. Nicely. Don't like flames. Well, I do, but only when I'm, doin 'em. :P

**Please read so you understand my poetic liberties----V **

And one more thing, since its how I interpreted it, Blue eyes signify the more emotional side of KOS-MOS. In the case of my stories, the eye shift represents a near complete shift in personality, so experiences that result from being more emotional seem, to the Red-Eyed KOS-MOS, to have been watched, not experienced. Also, I have no idea why her eyes shift color in the game.

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Xenosaga: Die Hoffnung für Menschheit

It was dark and silent onboard the Elsa as it docked at 13th Salem, with only a small portion of the crew still up and about, all of which were getting ready to get off board. At first glance, the colony they landed at seemed almost barren; had they not been told it was inhabited, they never would have docked. Junior, Ziggy and chaos went to look for supply shops and repair places, the captain, Tony and Hammer went to find a bar, or some sort of restaurant with alcohol, leaving the girls asleep in the ship and poor Allen alone to protect them. Little did any of them know, this backwater slum was about to become far more interesting than it appeared. The rare visitations from outsiders had all but stopped the rumors about the colony, but the occasional visitor would tell of strange, sometimes terrifying happenings, as one young Vector employee will be the first to find.

Shion Uzuki lay asleep at her keyboard, a long string of L's quickly extending across her screen. She smiled and made small eeping sounds in her sleep as she dreamt about her work, about her friends, and about her android creation, KOS-MOS, who was recharging in her black "bed" behind her creator. As she slept, Shion began to stir a little, her face screwing up a bit as her dreams began to distort. After a particularly nasty dream, she decided to move herself from the floor to a more suiting place: on top of KOS-MOS' dark bastion. She already had a cot set up there, in case she ever needed a close resting spot, and lowered herself onto it to resume her rest. As she fell into deeper and deeper sleep, her dreams became more and more distorted and perverted. A nice dream of her and her friends on the beach soon turned to a terrifying thunder storm, then to a gnosis attack in which MOMO and Allen had died, and she was mortally wounded. This was just the first of many such dreams, until finally the most terrible one struck her.

It was night outside, a black void of a night, no sign of light in the sky, and very little on the ground. Shion stood outside the gates of a gigantic house, a mansion even, dressed in her old Vector uniform, her coke bottle glasses shimmering in the light of a torch she carried, which she would soon find to be some of the only light she'd have. The walls and gates that surrounded the place were almost completely covered by ivy, under which some white bricks and black iron could be seen. After a few minutes, the ivy receded and the gates swung open, a powerful force calling the girl in. She recognized the place, barely, an old house she'd visited when she was very young. It had scared her, since the rooms were all filled with paintings of wars and deaths and monsters, and she wondered if it would still be as scary now. She made her way up the dark marble stairs, slowly but surely, examining the now dilapidated entryway, thick with fallen foliage and dense ivy. The front doors were huge, brown with golden trim around and seemed strangely new compared to their surroundings. As Shion gazed over them, she noticed a familiar question, written in large red letters which began to echo in her mind:

"Shion, would feeling pain make me complete?"

She gasped a little and carefully reached out to touch the message, which she found to be wet, smelled it, and then tasted a bit, sounding startled as she questioned:

"Blood…?"

She continued to gaze at the door, wondering where the blood was from, since KOS-MOS certainly had none, and then slowly opened it, a powerful gust of wind blowing out at her as the crack between the doors became larger. She had to struggle to stay on her feet until the gust subsided and she could enter.

The front room had walls made of black Malachite, which Shion had always found both interesting and odd, and was crowded with furniture, all of it rotted. The floor boards were mostly rotted, but she remembered they had been a dark redwood, and always creaked under her feet as she walked, a sound which had been amplified from the rot. The paintings had long since faded into obscurity, but their images still ran through Shion's mind, haunting her with their grizzly scenes, causing her to shudder with disgust. As she searched the room for signs of an injured person from which the blood could have come, she tried her best to shut the images out with those of her friends, but only managed to turn her happy thoughts into gruesome perversions of their former selves. Her thoughts all turned to the deaths of her friends, of her loved ones, finally bringing back the memory of Kevin. She gave up her search and ran to the next door as fast as she could, hoping the next room would relieve her of her nightmare, and approached the second door, the one she remembered leading into the cross rooms to taker to the east and west wings. She slammed into the door, hoping it would open, but instead flying back onto her bottom. She slowly raised her line of sight to the door and noticed another bloody message:

"Shion, if I knew your pain, would that complete me?"

She was far too shaken by her thoughts and collision to ponder the message and hurriedly opened the door, rushing into the next room. It was immediately apparent that this room was nothing like the old one, not even the same type of room. It was a giant ballroom, circular with giant plate-glass windows filling all but the doorways, depicting angels to the left and demons to the right, each taking the form of someone close to Shion. Five angels lined the left wall: MOMO, Junior, Jin, chaos, and Shion herself in the middle of them. To the right were Allen, Ziggy, Kevin, KOS-MOS and, again, Shion in the middle of them. The rest of the room seemed to be made of pure gold which glittered in the light that rained down from the extremely large silver chandelier that hung 45ft above the ground from the domed roof. As she ran farther and farther into the room, she felt her uniform slowly change on her body, becoming quickly heavier, almost too heavy for her to carry. She struggled to get out of it, but found that the armor was now part of her skin. She became more panicked, wondering "what the hell is going on here? What's happening to me?" Her arm began to tingle, to hurt, then started to shift into all sorts of weapons, a blade, a drill, a cannon, and each time hurt more than he last. She tried to keep herself from crying out in pain, but the pain soon became too much, and she let out an ear piercing scream. At that, her body returned to normal, and she laid gasping on the floor, curled into a ball and cradling her legs. A black void was what the room became, walls slowly fading into nothingness, the glimmer of gold giving way to the utter despair of this emptiness, and for the first time, Shion became aware of how alone she was, and she became further terrified. Her eyes darted quickly around the darkness closing in on her, screaming wordlessly "I'm going to die here!" as she felt the walls close in, encasing her in a cold metal bed. A voice, one that shifted almost constantly as it spoke, repeated a message in her mind:

"If you knew my pain, would you help me?"

She squeezed her eyes closed and hoped it would pass, but alas, no such relief came.

Shion began to let herself fall into her death-sleep, knowing that there was no one who could save her from the darkness, but quickly opened her eyes when she heard the buzzing of monitors turning on and shuffling outside her tomb. Slowly, what she assumed to be the top opened, though nothing but darkness lay before her, darker than hers, if it was possible. She bolted up, and was startled to see KOS-MOS staring at her with those soulless red eyes.

"K… KOS-MOS…?"

KOS-MOS simply nodded, then began to examine Shion, stitching up a few small cuts she'd received without noticing, asking questions in her cold, emotionless voice as she worked.

"Shion, what is it like to be human? To be so fragile and illogical, to have such a short life, and to slowly decay until the end of that life comes?"

She was caught off-guard and still shaken from the events moments before, so it took her a while to realize: she had had the opposite conversation with KOS-MOS. "What's it like to be so durable, invincible even? To be so calculating, so based in logic, and to know that, as long as you can repair yourself, you can live forever?" The recollection of this caused Shion to gasp in surprise, her eyes locking with KOS-MOS, who had decided to continue her inquiry at the absence of a response.

"What is it like to feel, Shion? Not to feel when it is deemed necessary, but to be ruled by your emotions, or at least influenced by them? I protect you because I am programmed to… do your emotions work the same way? Do you protect your friends because you care for them deeply? Is it a reflex, a necessity?"

Though it hardly seemed the time for a pleasant chat, or any sort of chat, for that matter, Shion decided that if it would soothe herself and help KOS-MOS, it couldn't hurt. Besides, she was with KOS-MOS now, and therefore, she was safe. After a few minutes of thought, she finally gave her answer.

"I suppose it is very similar… it does seem almost programmed in, the need to protect my loved ones… so yes, I'd say they're very much the same thing, KOS-MOS, just that one is done on a computer…"

KOS-MOS had turned away for a few moments as Shion spoke, and returned with a cup of hot tea, which Shion began to gulp down as soon as it was handed to her.

"Then, Shion, why did you not protect Kevin?"

The tea glass shattered on the "floor" of the void, Shion nearly choking on her tea at the question, having inhaled a large amount of it at the question.

"K… KOS-MOS…! What…?"

"Perhaps I misspoke. Why did you hesitate to protect Kevin? I have studied what video files remained of the scene, and I noticed that you hesitated to destroy me, even after everyone I had killed, and the loved one of yours that I was about to kill. Why?"

It took Shion a while to contemplate what had been said, and even longer to think on the day, since the memories were so painful, and thus quick to be pushed back. She finally grasped the memory solidly, everything she felt that night, everything she'd done, her answer very low, almost ashamed.

"It's strange… I... I guess I thought of you as a loved one too, KOS-MOS… since that night, I've always wished that I hadn't hesitated so long, that Kevin hadn't been killed by my incompetence, but… I've also regretted hurting –you- as much as I did..."

A chair seemed to have materialized as the two had spoken, KOS-MOS now sitting in it with her hands in her lap, listening intently. Her eyes had since shifted to a soft blue.

"Then… you considered my well-being on par with Kevin's…?"

KOS-MOS smiled a little and stood again, reaching her hand out to Shion and helping her stand as well. She then led her creator to a blank white door with a golden cross decorating it.

A faint click came from the door, and KOS-MOS slowly turned to face her companion, saying softly:

"Shion, are you ready to see the essence of my being? The part of me that longs to be all of me?"

Shion wondered now what was going on, what KOS-MOS meant by this, but nodded in agreement to her android's question.

"Then go through this door, and make what decisions you must. I'm sorry, but I cannot go with you…"

Shion smiled softly and nodded a little, touching KOS-MOS' cheek softly and blushing a little, then turning to the door.

The door opened itself as KOS-MOS disappeared, revealing a room almost as dark as the last, though roof, floor and walls could be made out, as well as a few silhouettes. The room was rather small and octagonal, small window slits at the top of each wall, letting in small bits of light, probably from torches. Slowly, more light poured in from seemingly nowhere, showing the room to be again blank white along the walls, completely undecorated aside from the windows. The center of the room and the back wall remained unlit, but small streams of blood trailed from the center, pooling along the edges of the room. As she continued to gaze at the center, it became dimly, and then fully lit, unveiling a cross-shaped table with KOS-MOS tied onto it with bladed cord, blood pouring from her wrists and ankles from the cuts. She didn't notice Shion since her eyes, with tears of blood pouring from them, were locked on the ceiling. She was nude, and as Shion ran to her side, she noticed the peculiar wounds on the bleeding girl. The first was on her forehead, and read: "Ye shall not think as Mortals". As she lowered her gaze, she noticed two more messages, etched on the bosom of her creation, over where her heart would be, which read: "Ye shall not feel as mortals, nor shall ye love as mortals". Her gaze lowered to KOS-MOS' stomach, a new message carving itself in: "Ye shall not live as mortals, for ye shall not be as mortals". As the message finished, Shion looked back up into the eyes of her android, now filled with a mixture of pain, terror and sadness as they gazed at the ceiling. Shion looked up as well, seeing what was terrifying her companion, a slowly fading message that read: "Ye shall be as Gods". After being silent for so long, KOS-MOS finally screamed out in pain as the message appeared on her, though Shion could not see it: the message was not only hidden, but Shion was busy taking off the ties that held the room's victim. As she was lifted from the table, KOS-MOS let out a slight sigh of relief, though she was still in great pain. The message took up the whole of her back, and oozed blood onto the floor.

She carried the young, bleeding woman back through the void-black room, Shion's coffin-bed calling out in a myriad of voices at the two, though none of it could be understood due to each voice calling over the other. She took the girl back into the giant ballroom that had disappeared earlier, and upon entering, the form of the girl faded from her arms and reappeared before her, gazing at her sadly. The five demons and angels that decorated the walls began to materialize from the walls, surrounding Shion and her partner, each one saying something different to her, arguing to her and amongst themselves what should be done with this rescued KOS-MOS, the nearly-truly human side of her. The angels agreed: KOS-MOS wanted to be more human, seemingly more than anything, and nothing should hold her back from that. MOMO and chaos stood stalwart by the belief that KOS-MOS should be allowed happiness, just as all humans are. Junior thought that a not creepy KOS-MOS would be "hot", angelic Shion argued that this would make both KOS and herself happy, since a personable KOS-MOS was what she had wanted since the start of the project, and Jin wanted what would make his sister happiest. The demon's opinion's were as such: Allen knew that changing KOS-MOS in such a way would certainly get the two of them fired from Vector, and, to a lesser extent, impede his chances of Shion falling in love with him, Ziggy and demon KOS agreed that the change would make her far less effective as a weapon, and thus could endanger everyone should her cold calculations of how to survive be interrupted by emotion, and Kevin and demon Shion brought up their own point: KOS-MOS had killed Kevin, and this should be her punishment.

As they argued, things escalated into violence, desire fighting doubt and logic, Shion's conscious fighting itself until a decision had been made. The desire was what remained, and Shion led the new KOS-MOS out through ballroom doors, into the front room. The decayed furniture was gone, replaced by a single chair, which Shion helped K-MOS into. The two smiled softly at each other, Shion half-kneeling to level with the missing piece of her creation, the thing that would make it perfect. She kissed it gently on the cheek, but before she could do more, the world around her faded into nothingness, even KOS-MOS, and she woke up in her cot to the sound of a scream elsewhere in the ship. She sprung from her bed and hurried into her outfit, then glanced back at the black coffin and gasped a little, thinking "I'll be back soon, KOS-MOS, I hope this'll do for now" as she opened the capsule and turned on a light for her android. As she hurried toward the scream, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. KOS-MOS had stirred a little in her bed as the light came on, and her lips formed a small smile, though it had just as quickly disappeared.

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Hey hey, thanks for reading if ya did. Sorry if the end was bad, I had it all planned out cept that. :p I'll probably change it later, if only to make the dialogue less cheesy, and will probably write again, whether you like it or not! But please tell me what you think, what I can change/improve on. BTW, this fic includes Shion X KOS-MOS stuff. :P


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